BLOCKERS

SYNOPSIS:
Three parents try to stop their daughters from having sex on Prom night.

Review by Louise Keller:There's a lot of fun to be had in this fresh, upbeat and bawdy comedy in which three teenage girls make a pact to lose their virginity on Prom night. But Blockers is far more than a raunchy teen comedy. With its zippy script, sparkling cast and generous dose of wackiness, Pitch Perfect writer Kay Cannon has made an auspicious directing debut with this funny, character-driven film that delivers chuckles and laughs throughout. There's a delightful innocence about it that belies its more raunchy elements: namely explicit language, full frontal male nudity, an outrageous butt-chugging scene and a hilarious naked sex game of Marco Polo. Irrespective of how compromising the situation might be, the tone is remains sweet and offbeat.

In a similar mould to Bridesmaids, Trainwreck and Girls Trip, Blockers embraces the close friendship between three pre-college students Julie, Kayla and Sam buoyantly played by Kathryn Newton, Geraldine Viswanathan and Gideon Adlon. They are all excellent. They might still be virgins, but are hardly innocents; the sex pact texting stream of porno-like emojis sets the three anxious parents into a state of panic-driven hyperactivity. Their 'beaux' are also entertaining: Graham Phillips as Julie's dreamboat, Jimmy Bellinger as the stumpy mushroom in the Fedora and I especially liked Miles Robbins who cooks drugs into everything. There are countless funny lines: 'Penises are not for looking at; they're for use. Like plungers.' And 'sleeping with someone else's wife is not a sexual preference'. And surprisingly (or not), it's the parents who use the expletives - that ricochet like bullets.

Looking as though she has come straight from Pleasantville, Leslie Mann is great fun as Julie's single mother; tough-guy John Cena is Kayla's square-jawed, cry-baby dad and Ike Baringholtz is individual as Sam's geeky divorced dad. The film's funniest scene is the one in which Cena and Baringholtz are forced to touch the naked body parts of two kinky parents playing sex games while blindfolded - to their subtitled mouthings. The scene when Mann finds herself under the bed strewn with rose petals, where he daughter is about to be deflowered, is also fun.